TED: For Seth MacFarlane Fans Only

TED (Dir. Seth MacFarlane, 2012)







“I don’t sound that much like Peter Griffin!” protests the profane protagonist of Seth MacFarlane’s first full-length feature film, but obviously that’s a hollow claim.

MacFarlane, of course, voices Ted, the teddy bear that magically comes alive to a little boy that grows up to be Bostonian man-child played by Mark Wahlberg, and, yes, he sounds exactly like his famous Family Guy character.

That does a lot to call out what this movie essentially is: a collection of gags that were too R-rated for basic cable, decorating a flimsy plot.

It’s a plot everyone should recognize from many movies and sitcoms - a man-child’s girlfriend, in this case played by Mila Kunis, begs her beau to grow up, but he’s too attached to a lifestyle of juvenile high jinks, in this case embodied in a stuffed plush talking toy.

Come to think of it, it was a scenario even used in last year’s THE MUPPETS, with Jason Segel asking himself the musical question is he a “Man or a Muppet,” after being left by Amy Adams.

But at least in that film it was just a silly subplot, and not the full narrative as it is here. An attempt to create conflict between Wahlberg and Kunis by having Joel McHale (Community, Talk Soup) as Kunis’ slimy corporate boss constantly come on to her, doesn’t raise any stakes because of how her character is set up we never believe she would go for him over Wahlberg.

But back to the talking Teddy Bear part, I mean it’s his movie, right? Ted is an aimless comedy archetype – a hard drinking, drugging, foul-mouthed party animal just like last year’s PAUL (which was stupid, sure, but much funnier than this).

With the sheer volume of jokes, one-liners, and pop culture pot-shots, there can’t help but be some humorous moments, but TED gets tiresome really quickly (two 9/11 jokes, really?). The CGI used to animate the bear is flawless, but to what avail with this lazy material?

That is, I suppose, unless you’re a die-hard Family Guy fan, or a big American Dad fan, or even just a casual The Cleveland Show fan (I'm none of those things), and you’re way into folks making fun of crappy movies, celebrities, and music mostly from the ‘80s.

For some reason there’s a lot of focus on the infamous 1980 sci-fi flop FLASH GORDON (it’s the movie Ted and Wahlberg watch the most while getting high, you see), including a lengthy cameo by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones in a wildly typical party sequence.

At the screening I went to, plenty of people laughed, but how many folks in the audience really knew that 32-year old film? Sure, it’s got a classically kitschy theme song by Queen and it may qualify for the so bad it’s good factor (like Wahlberg says at one point), but is it really worthy of this kind of satiric attention?

MacFarlane takes what feels and looks like a warmed-over Farrelly brothers project, and interjects it with his distinctive smarmy tone. However there is little a bit of a heart within purely because of Kunis’ invested performance. But next time she does a movie like this, she really ought not to waste so much energy.

Oh yeah, there’s also the third act action climax involving a creepy Giovanni Ribisi kidnapping Ted for his rotund son (Aedin Mincks), but, hey, it’s an ending consistent with the uninspired rest of the film.

The not terrible but tedious TED is really a film for MacFarlane fans only, but even they might want to wait to get the inevitable unrated DVD or Blu ray, because I bet it and all the bloopers, gag reels, and outtakes will be much funnier on the small screen.

And as cheap as the humor is in TED, people should really get their money’s worth.

More later...

New DVD Review: SOUND OF NOISE

SOUND OF NOISE (Dirs. Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, 2012)

This film about a group of avant-garde guerilla drummers who take the Swedish city of Malmö by storm with a series of illegal public performances really took me by surprise.

I wasn’t expecting such a funny stylish ride, but SOUND OF NOISE delightfully delivers with its satisfyingly inventive spirit.

It’s partly told through the police procedural point of view of Bengt Nilsson, a tone deaf cop who hates music, and partly through the four movements the chaotic percussionists are playing in such places as a hospital operating room, a bank (“This is a gig! Everybody keep calm!”), outside an opera house, and finally hanging from high tension power cables.

The rogue gang, lead by Magnus Börjeson (who composed the music for the film) and Sanna Persson, usually leaves a metronome behind at the scene of the crime, er, gig, so that helps Nilsson to follow their trail.

There’s a surreal element here, where Nilsson can’t hear anything the drummers have played on - he tries to make a metal bedroom clang against the wall in the hospital but he hears nothing. It’s sort of the reverse of what Jean Dujardin went though in the dream scene in THE ARTIST.

Börjeson drops away as a major character pretty early on, and the movie mostly concentrates on Nilsson and Persson.

Persson has a priceless back story in which she was expelled from the music academy for flooding their concert hall during one of her experimental recitals.

When Persson says “Listen to this city contaminated by shitty music…it’s time to strike back” she sounds like she really means it, and I don’t speak Swedish so I think that’s impressive.

Nilsson’s anti-music/anti-any kind of noise stance comes from being from a family of musicians. As Nilsson’s famous composer brother, Sven Ahlström, at first appears like a condescending jerk that the movie will make fun of, but thankfully screenwriters Jim Birmant, Ola Simonsson, and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson had better ideas.

Once one gets the hang of it the narrative may seem a bit transparent (and there may be too many convenient coincidences), but there’s a lot of pure amusement here.

As recent comic thrillers go, I sure liked the sound of this noise.

More later...

A Bill Murray Coloring Book? Yep, That's Right

Get this - a new Vancouver, Canada-based publisher, which is also a record label, named Belly Kids is releasing a Bill Murray coloring book in August called “Thrill Murray.”

From their press release: “Be it in ‘Groundhog Day,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Rushmore’ or ‘Lost in Translation’ Bill Murray has become a diamond of the modern screen, the heartbeat of any worthwhile DVD collection.”

Can't argue with that. So, why not honor the icon with a colouring-in book (as the Canadians call it)?

The images they've released, selected from the over 20 different artists who contributed, are funny and well detailed, even if Murray looks skinny in films he was chubby in, and fat in the films he was fit in (i.e. “Lost in Translation”).

“Thrill Murray,” which is credited to author Mike Coley, will be available on August 13th. You can pre-order it here. Also available will be prints of a few of the images, and a tote bag.

So, stock up on crayons so you can fill in all the Bill you can.

More later...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER: The Film Babble Blog Review

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2012)

Later this year, the 16th President of the United States will get the epic biopic treatment by Steven Spielberg in his adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestseller “Team of Rivals,” titled simply LINCOLN.

But if you can’t wait until then to see Honest Abe on the big screen (and you want a longer more convoluted title), here’s a movie, also based on a bestseller (by Seth Grahame-Smith), that attempts to spice up the historical record by adding supernatural elements to it.

Unfortunately it’s not a successful experiment, mainly because of its lack of charm and humor, and its dull formulaic storyline. With its premise, one might expect some outrageousness – like the tongue-in-cheekiness of a Bruce Campbell project, but there’s no BUBBA TO TEP-type fun to be had here.

Benjamin Walker, who resembles a young Liam Neeson (actually played a young Liam Neeson in KINSEY), plays Lincoln, who when not studying law and working in a general store, is out killing vampires with a axe/gun contraption.

It takes a stylized montage for Walker to be trained for action by his mentor Dominic Cooper, who appears to be channeling Tim Curry, then the film rolls from one set-piece to another – none of which provide any excitement. The pacing is so off that not one of the supposed to be sudden shots revealing in-your-face fangs is the least bit scary.

The special effects factor is underwhelming as well, with the 3D conversion muddying up instead of enhancing the imagery. The blustery Civil War battles between the mortal humans of the North, and the slave-owning vampires of the South are too messy to allow any tension, likewise the literal train wreck climax.

Then there’s the awful dialogue. Whether spoken by Walker, Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd Lincoln, or Rufus Sewell as the film’s lead vampire villain, the overwrought over-simplistic lines are laughably bad throughout the entire overlong movie.

It feels weird to say this about a film entitled ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, but it takes itself way too seriously. I mean I guess it’s cool that Bekmambetov and crew want to pay so much respect to Lincoln’s legacy, but, c’mon, have a little fun with the concept, why dontcha?

As it stands, this film joins this year’s Edgar Allan Poe thriller dud THE RAVEN, and last year’s Shakespeare-was-a-fraud fiasco ANONYMOUS as incredibly misguided movies that screw with history and end up screwing their audiences too.

More later...

THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND: The Film Babble Blog Review

This indie film, made for the low budget of $175,000, is now making the film festival rounds. Later this week it will be shown at The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, early July at the at the Northwest Ohio Independent Film Festival, and July 24th-29th it’ll be in competition for several awards as one of only 9 selected feature films at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Palatine, Illinois.






THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND
(Dir. David Spaltro, 2012)

In the New York-based David Spaltro’s second full-length feature, Molly Ryman stars as a 20-something aged graduate student who is obsessed with the subject of her thesis about what happens after we die. So much so that she attempted suicide as an “experiment,” she tells us (and we see) in her dryly spoken opening voice-over.

Ryman lives with 2 arty room-mates (Hugo Dillon and Melissa Hampton) in a Brooklyn loft above a bar, where she has a crush on the bartender (Aaron Mathias).

Her therapist (Lisa Eichhorn) tells our sardonic protagonist that her father wants her to change her lifestyle habits, specifically that she “needs to stop drinking and whoring herself every night.”

“But I’m so good at it.” Ryman replies with a smirk.

Now, this is coming from somebody who works in bookstore retail because she considers it a “pressure-less expectation-free zone.”

Although she’s interviewed many “near-deathers,” as she calls them, Ryman doesn’t quite make a real connection until she meets Grace Folsom as a woman dying of cancer in Catholic hospice. A connection is something Violet needs, as she and her room-mates are having trouble raising money to pay their rent, the brooding bartender is ignoring her passes, and she’s burned out by too many one-night-stands.

Spaltro’s well-written film has a naturalistic pace. It doesn’t feel like we are caught up in plot mechanics, no, we are hanging, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beers, with Ryman and her friends in their beloved dank bar and drab yet utterly hip dwelling, which are dark, yet sharply shot by cinematographer Gus Sacks.

Ryman and Folsom’s exchanges are the heart of the film, and they are as witty as they are moving. 




At first snark meets snark, but these two souls – more confused than lost – have plenty of both witty and moving insights to share with each other and us. Folsom steals the film from Ryman in one scene in which she sobs saying that she doesn’t want to go.

There is not a trace of emotional manipulation in that moment, a testament to Folsom’s performance and Spaltro’s deft direction.




This is not to sell Ryman short - hers is an honest and affecting depiction of a jaded woman on the edge of hardcore depression, but aware, even if hesitant, of the possibility of enlightenment. As she says in her intro: “Okay, maybe there’s a light.”

There may be some heavy handiness, a few superfluous subplots (as likable and invested as Dillon and Hampton are - they appear to be simply muted comic relief), and some of its one-liners may fall flat, but THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND gets personal with its characters and themes in a refreshing and extremely engaging way.

People say when you are young you are the most questioning, but maybe becoming an adult is realizing that the questioning never ends. We’re always going to have to deal with death, and that’s always going to be an unanswerable question.

At her most exasperated, Ryman warns, “Say ‘things happen for a reason,’ and I scream.” Folsom quips: “I’m not that clichéd.”

Thankfully, Spaltro’s thoughtful film isn’t either.

More later...

ROCK OF AGES Left Me Hair Metal-ed Out

Opening today at a multiplex near you:



ROCK OF AGES (Dir. Adam Shankman, 2012)

Back when I was a teenager in the ‘80s, I hated the music this movie celebrates.

When I think of great ‘80s rock, I think of R.E.M., The Replacements, The Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, The Smiths, et al.

The bands whose music (sung by the cast) makes up the soundtrack of this movie - Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Journey, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Def Leopard - were the commercial sell-out arena rock enemies to me.

Over time, I started to appreciate some of the output of the latter contingent, but in an ironic way. I wouldn’t listen to this music on my own, but it sure sounded good when it blasted out of Tony Soprano’s stereo.

For a bit of the screen time of ROCK OF AGES, which is based on the 2006 Broadway musical, the gimmick of ‘80s power-ballad-anthems being sung by stars like Tom Cruise (as a very Axl Rose-ish rock star), Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Russell Brand, is comically enjoyable.

But before it even got to the half-hour mark, I was more than a little hair metal-ed out.

I can’t complain that the film is cheesy, garish, and utterly ridiculous because it’s purposely packaged to be that way. The cliché-ridden plot is by design too - small town girl (Julianne Hough) comes to LA to become a singer, and meets a city boy (Diego Boneta) - yes, just like the Journey lyrics - and they pine for fame while working at a popular club, the Bourbon Room, which is in danger of being shut down because of unpaid taxes.

Of the cast, only Cruise, who swaggers through the movie, stands out (everybody, especially Baldwin is just peddling their same old shtick), but he’s not given much of a character. In a movie like this, I know that doesn’t matter; it only matters that Cruise can sing.

But the concept’s charm is diluted by the numbing overabundance of ‘80s music video tropes, and whatever fun I was supposed to be having was gets buried under noisy annoying mash-ups like when Zeta-Jones’ Tipper Gore-esque character (whose back story is instantly guessable) and her Christian cronies sing Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” while Brand and the Bourbon Room crowd respond with Starship’s “We Built This City.”

Director Shankman, did a much better job with handling the music and choreography in HAIRSPRAY a few years back. But much like that film, ROCK OF AGES looks like a over-lit television show - it’s not cinematic looking at all. Shankman has had his hand in directing a few episodes of Glee (go figure - he did the “Rocky Horror” one), so that’s no surprise.

All of this would be easier to take if it didn’t run for over 2 hours (okay, only 3 minutes over, but still).

Maybe if they cut most of the crappy dialogue out and kept it to the length of a mix CD (80 min.), then folks not partial to this music, like me, wouldn’t get so unbearably overpowered by the excess of icky ‘80s power-ballad-anthems on glitzy display.

Actually, even then, this would be pretty hard going.





More later...

Pascal Santschi's very indie film THE ARRIVISTE is now available on DVD

Now out on DVD:

THE ARRIVISTE (Dir. Pascal Santschi, 2012)

Now *this* is an independent movie!

First time feature film-maker Pascal Santschi wrote, edited, scored, produced, and shot THE ARRIVISTE guerilla-style on the streets of Brooklyn on 35 mm with an extremely low budget – less than $10,000. You can’t get anymore indie than that.

The film centers on Eamon Speer as a young man on parole, whose hardened criminal brother (P.J. Cross) is missing, and from what we gather in the first few minutes - he has been chopped up into pieces for blackmailing the wrong people.

This leaves Speer as the sole beneficiary on a life insurance policy that he’s told by a slimey agent (Tom Morewick) could get him a “nice chunk of change.” Of course, there’s the issue that all of Speer’s brother’s body has to be found for the money to come through.

Despite Morewick’s pressure, Speer hesitates to sign the papers because he sense something isn’t right, especially because there’s an obnoxious police detective (Gary Devirgilio) snooping around. There’s also a novelist (Mark Fernandez) hoping to capitalize on the situation in a sensationalistic true crime book.

As Morewick tells Speer, “It’s all a bit complicated and confusing, so I won’t go too deep into it.”

Santschi's twisty dark narrative has nary a likable character in sight, yet is an involving film with some sharp writing.

The stiff acting and bad lighting (some night shots were so dark and grainy that sometimes it’s hard to see what’s going on) can be forgiven obviously because of the budget. Many directors’ debuts are saddled with the same issues, but Santschi’s raw talent definitely shines through the often muddy presentation.

While it’s impressive that Santschi wrote and performed the jazzy background music, I wish it wasn’t so bippy and intrusive in some scenes, and it often sounded a little too comic and silly for this material’s tone.

Not to say there isn’t humor, some of it in the form of a loud homeless germophobe (Raymond Turturro) who Speer keeps encountering on the street, and some amusing Tarentino-esue scuffles and gunplay.

THE ARRIVISTE shows a lot of promise for the directorial debut of the ambitious Santschi, and it has something that many much more expensive films can’t even dream of having - true grit.

More later...